Descriptive Route Names

After several weeks of atypically cool weather, things are warming up around here, and I expect the club’s scheduled rides will have more participants. We have several club rides. There’s the regular Sunday ride at 8:15 a.m. For the A riders, it is not a no-drop ride, and riders are expected to average 16-18 mph over 50-60 miles. There’s also a Saturday no-drop ride, but it’s still relatively fast. Some of the retireds or work-from-home types do a Friday morning “Zoo” ride, which takes them out to the Austin Zoo and then back via some hilly roads. The main hill ride is Wednesday morning.

But in recent weeks, we’ve seen a lot of riders modifying start times, routes, speeds, etc. It was finally enough to prompt one member to post to our Yahoo board that ride names need to be changed.

“We need some ride names that will more accurately reflect what we can expect,” he wrote. He had a few suggestions:

The Janet Hangover ride, that starts an hour later than scheduled because the ride leader partied a little too hard the night before.

Jack’s I-Forgot-to-Download-the-Route-and-I’ll-Sort-Of-Improvise-As-We-Go-Along Ride, which often results in turns onto roads under construction, or roads that used to be paved, but are now gravel, or roads that dead end. Riders can expect to ride 10 miles farther than they anticipated.

Martin’s Last-Minute-Hill-Ride-Alternate, that takes place without notice, when Martin tackles the main hill ride and finds it’s too tough for him. His version is much shorter and involves a lot less climbing.

I suggested the Ray-Sunday-B-Ride-But-Because-He’s-So-Slow-Lately-It-Oughta-Be-a-C-Ride-That-Takes-Place-Every-Sunday-Except-When-He-Doesn’t-Show-Up-Which-Has-Been-A-Lot-Lately.

Then there’s Greg’s Saturday-No-Drop-That-Turns-Into-a-Not-No-Drop-Ride-Because-He-Thinks-We-Should-All-Ride-Faster Ride. The name speaks for itself.

On a regular Sunday, the post-ride coffee klatsch yields several other descriptive ride names.

But for some reason, the club’s information page still lists rides by their standard names.

Do the riders you travel with have their own descriptive names for their routes?